Hold Congress Accountable

About FreedomConnector

Find activists, groups, and events right in your own neighborhood. Join FreedomConnector to get involved and learn more about key issues threatening our economic freedom. Whether you’re looking for like-minded people, trying to boost your existing group’s impact, or simply trying to stay up on current events, FreedomConnector is the place to start. See what’s happening in your state today!

Search FreedomWorks

Resources

Blog

Fate of Tennessee School Vouchers to be Decided

The fate of school vouchers in Tennessee will be decided tomorrow, and there is an usual fight brewing. The problem doesn’t seem to be whether or not to offer vouchers, but how many and to whom. Arguments over these details could lead to vouchers being scrapped altogether.

To satisfy the Tennessee legislature, Governor Bill Haslam proposed the Tennessee Choice and Opportunity Scholarship Act, which was limited to low-income children in failing schools. He also capped the available vouchers to 5,000 in its first year, although it is set to grow to 20,000 by 2016. However, in an interesting twist, Haslam may kill his own proposal rather than accept amendments currently being discussed.

Competing measures, filed by Senator Dolores Gresham (R) and Brian Kelsey (R) would not limit participation to low-performing schools and has no limitation on growth, allowing a greater range of families in Tennessee the ability to choose the best fit for education. Gresham and Kelsey are now pushing for Haslam’s bill to be amended to look more like theirs, increasing the number of children and families who would have access to vouchers. If this happens, Haslam has said that he will withdraw his bill. “We put a lot of thought into what we thought the right proposal is,” he said. “We do think that starting with low-income students in the lowest-performing schools makes sense.”

They say that the devil is in the details. In this case, those details might just kill school Vouchers in Tennessee before they even take off. No child should have to wait for a better education, so let’s hope that Tennessee can come together for education reform when the bill is heard tomorrow.

I am extremely disappointed in Governor Bill Haslam's view regarding Tennessee school vouchers. I was raised in Tennessee, attended schools there (including UT) and plan to come back to make my final home there.
To say that if Senators Gresham and Kelsey succeed in modifying his bill so that it is available to a wider base of children he will kill his own proposal smacks of just the very type of close-mindedness Tennessee has fought so hard for so long to be rid of.
Surely the Governor does not believe that only his ideas are acceptable to be presented to the masses. He is not the only resident in Tennessee, and I'm sure somewhere along the path to election he must have intimated that he believes whatever the majority feel is best overall for the state is the better way to go. I commend him for recognizing the need for this measure; I implore him to be more open minded, establish a committee for establishing guidelines, and pull himself out of the day to day management of some of these bills.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith attended traditional public schools, but chose a different path when it came time to choose how to school their own children. The Smiths have a son and a daughter, both of whom were educated both through homeschooling and in private schools. Their daughter, however, decided she wanted something different for high school.

Florida Governor Rick Scott has signed a new educational reform bill into law which some are calling “an education revolution.” This bill is aimed at revamping high school education in the state of Florida that will lead to more students being able to get a job upon graduation.

When it comes to education reform, there is a lot of misinformation out there. While it has been shown time and time again that school choice is a win-win situation for everyone involved, there are those who continue to argue against it. Perhaps a little empirical evidence will change some minds.

This school year, Virginia Kruta made the leap from private schooling to homeschooling her four children. Virginia attended public school through sixth grade, then moved to a Christian prep school until graduation. Her husband Jim attended private Christian school through eighth grade, then attended the same Christian prep school. So, with experience in both public and private schools, what made this family to decide that homeschooling was the right fit for their family?

On today's edition of The FreedomCast, Director of Grassroots for FreedomWorks, Whitney Neal joins me to discuss several school choice bills currently making their way through the Texas legislature and why school choice is the civil rights issue of our times.
You can support FreedomWorks' efforts in Texas and on behalf of children everywhere who deserve school choice.

Meet the Thompsons, a homeschooling family from Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Thompson both attended traditional public schools, but decided they wanted something different for their own four children. So, how did this family decide that homeschooling was best for them, and what happened next?

Republicans are beginning to coalesce around School Choice with Senators Rand Paul and Lamar Alexander’s amendment. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas began with a rallying cry in his key-note address at CPAC declaring “education is too important for it to be controlled by bureaucrats in Washington, taking choices away from parents and kids…We need to champion school choice – the civil rights issue of the next generation.” Not only is Senator Ted Cruz correct about school choice being the civil rights issue of the next generation, but it is the civil rights issue of this generation.

Kids are weird — especially mine. Sure, I can identify personality traits as coming from me and my wife, but they’re jumbled up in odd ways. If we’re the original track, our kids are the dance remixes. My eldest daughter is analytical and conscientious when work needs to be done, but fearless and funny in her off time. Her younger sister will procrastinate and goof off, but will create elaborate, amazing projects just for fun. Definitely related, but wildly different.

Today, the Indiana Supreme Court made an important decision for families in that state by unanimously upholding their school voucher law. “Finding that the challengers have not satisfied the high burden required to invalidate a statute on constitutional grounds, we affirm the trial court’s judgment upholding the constitutionality of the statutory voucher program,” the court wrote.